NOT too long ago in the office of Myanmar's media censor, a young
military officer crumpled up a newspaper article by a noted Myanmar
writer and, dropping it on to the floor, used a golf putter to send it
across the room.

The putter is now in the closet and the censorship office no more.

After four decades of military rule, the civilian government has
freed the Internet, and handed out licences for private newspapers. So
far, 31 licences have been issued and 12 privately run dailies appear
regularly, in addition to four state-owned newspapers.

But private media has not exercised the responsibility that comes
with freedom, critics say, especially on the hot-button issues of
religion and ethnic relations.

Some think the anti-Muslim sentiment that has seized parts of this
mostly Buddhist nation would not have been so inflamed had private media
outlets applied higher standards and separated comment from reportage.

Sectarian violence in Myanmar's western Rakhine state last year
killed more than 100 people, most of them minority Muslim Rohingya, and
displaced 140,000 others.

This year, violence across central and northern Myanmar has left over 50 dead and displaced thousands.

The anti-Muslim wave is driven by right-wing nationalist Buddhist
groups such as the 969 Movement led by Mandalay-based monk U Wirathu,
who freely courts the media.

"The media in general tends to be nationalistic and stokes
anti-Muslim fear," says Mr Aung Zaw, editor of the Irrawaddy news
magazine. "And users of social media have been especially
irresponsible."

There are at least two instances of what some consider to be partisan reporting.
When United Nations special envoy Tomas Ojea Quintana was in Myanmar
last month, reports of private media groups such as Eleven Media
portrayed him as being overly respectful to Muslims and not showing
enough respect for the majority community.

But a source who was at some meetings refuted this, saying the envoy was equally respectful to all those he met.

At a peace conference in Yangon in July, a reporter from The Voice
Weekly asked Muslim leader U Aye Lwin to sing the national anthem to
show that he knew it.
The latter said the conference was not an appropriate venue and that he could sing it in private for the journalist.

However, the report said he refused to sing the national anthem.

Burman-Buddhist nationalism is a frequent theme. Recently, Buddhist
mobs sang the national anthem as they torched Muslim homes and shops in a
town in north-western Myanmar.

Dr Maung Zarni, a visiting fellow at the London School of Economics,
said in an e-mail to The Straits Times: "Most Burmese journalists are
Islamophobic… and unprofessional. I am not surprised at all about
irresponsible reportage (attempting) to stoke further ultra-nationalist
sentiment."

Distorted reporting is not uncommon in Asian societies, especially those where religion and the state are closely intertwined.

In Sri Lanka, the predominantly Sinhala-language media has developed a
strong anti-Muslim bias since early last year. The country's majority
Sinhalese, much like the Burman majority in Myanmar, sees themselves as
guardians of orthodox Theravada Buddhism.

"Myanmar is an extreme example of this - lifting the lid and seeing
all the grievances emerge," says Mr Kunda Dixit, editor of Nepali Times
and former co-publisher of Himal, a news magazine focusing on South
Asia. "And the media laps it up. Hate speech sells - and worryingly, it
is often on ethnic and religious lines which the media exploits for
political or commercial reasons."

The government, which is now trying to place limits on the new
free-for-all, has drafted legislation to give it the power to issue and
cancel publication licences.
Information Minister Aung Kyi told journalists recently that Myanmar
at this juncture needed a "socially responsible media code" with the
government as a regulator.

It is faced with the choice of falling back on old authoritarian
instincts or finding a balance between openness and control, according
to author-historian Thant Myint U.